


you don't see me drinking alone

by blossomshed



Category: Supernatural, xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 14:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13882572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blossomshed/pseuds/blossomshed
Summary: At the end of the world, sometimes Castiel needed help from unusual sources.





	you don't see me drinking alone

**Author's Note:**

> my favourite thing in the world is to imagine my favourite things in the world interacting with each other.

The first time he meets her he is earnest and straight and says, I wish to find God.

She is wearing a necklace that doesn't suit her, and he knows this because she keeps drawing attention to it, idly fiddling with it.

She is a Witch who grants wishes, or so the rumours say, and he knows as soon as he can't easily go to her shop - he must knock, wait to be greeted, a strange experience for one such as him - that there is probably some truth to this. Or at least, truth to her having some strange power.

She is a shady woman, but Castiel is a pretty shady angel these days.

So he makes his wish, and she shakes her head, and he feels as though she will beg clarification, set a high price for asking such a thing, for _meaning_  such a thing, but she fiddles with the charm on the cord necklace (it's masculine, where everything else about her is not) and says a clue is closer than he thinks and he wants to demand that she be straight with him, _damn_  the price, when he understands what she's doing.

Castiel is observant in ways that Dean and Sam miss, because they see that he sees not through their sarcasm and cultural quips and weird human _ways_ , but he is observant, and he knows that charm and that necklace, or at least the _real_  one, and he nods. looks again at the witch, in query, and she says _this one's a freebie_. 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next time, he asks for a way to bind an angel, and she says _name your poison_  because there a myriad different ways and it's cheaper if she doesn't have to do the thinking, so he speeds through the knowledge of so, so many things he has catalogued away and asks for something old, rare. Probably impossible to get hold of in these times.

He has only just nodded to himself to confirm that yes, that's the right one, when he notices the old urn by the side of her lounger, and wonders if she'd known what he would ask. She smiles like a mind reader, and it's off-putting because she is not _like_  him, not _of_  him and should not be able to do that. He shakes it off. Shopkeepers have many tricks.

She asks his name and he states it baldly, she smiles and hands over an urn of ancient and precious oil that could not possibly exist in these times, and he nods again, awaiting a price. _Names are powerful things_  is all she says to send him on his way, and the next two times he asks, she behaves as though he is still in store credit, even as he has no idea what he has paid.

 

* * *

 

He is by no means reliant on her, but when every other avenue open to him is exhausted - the few avenues he has left, the few contacts and allegiances his siding against the will of the Host has not lost him - he is back at the door of the shop, knocking and shifting awkwardly and impatiently when he can't just, _pop in_  like he can almost anywhere else. And she will answer the door and give him a rueful smirk that fills him with a sensation he hasn't quite learned the word for - not a positive one, one of those human, grey-shaded emotions he had no contact with before now. She has not asked anything of him in a while and it is troublesome because he is essentially making deals without knowing the terms.

 

* * *

 

 

God says this is not his problem and Castiel is knocking on her door again, and she has beer and isn't in the least bit sympathetic and he starts to think she gave him that first 'freebie' because it _couldn't_ be done, no matter the price, and to say so would tarnish her oh-so-gleaming reputation as a wish granter, and he is maybe a lot drunk and surly and not in the mood for his usual blank-faced pleasantries or whatever you'd call them. He has been to a liquor store or several and this is just another stop on his world-tour bender.

He feels lost and wishes for direction.

She tells him to check his phone.


End file.
